The bottom line is this: With or without the Affordable Care Act, the nation can no longer kick the can down the road on costs, writes Arthur Kellermann.
Given the recent spate of highly publicized disasters, why don't more Americans pay attention to the advice of public health officials? The messages they are getting are largely based on unverified assumptions, not hard evidence. Equally concerning, these assumptions may inadvertently hinder preparedness.
Adequate compensation is critical to recruiting and retaining an all-volunteer force—in peacetime and wartime alike. To assess the effectiveness of U.S. military pay and benefits, the president directs a review of military compensation every four years. Four RAND studies contributed to this review.
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act is unquestionably historic, but there is a critical aspect of health care reform that still needs to be fixed. The nation needs to take decisive action to address the rising costs of health care, writes Arthur Kellermann.
Violence in Syria has only intensified since the failed ceasefire, leading the UN to suspend its observer mission and prompting comparisons to the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.
Government austerity and economic growth are not antonyms: Austerity in debt-financed government spending complements economic growth, rather than conflicting with it, writes Charles Wolf.
Improving HIV prevention and medical care delivery to persons living with HIV/AIDS should be a collaborative effort, particularly in the Gulf States region, where resources are limited but the epidemic is expanding, writes Vivian Towe.
June is National PTSD Awareness Month and June 27th is PTSD Awareness Day, providing an opportunity to recognize the challenges faced by survivors of trauma who live with PTSD symptoms. RAND research is helping increase awareness about the disorder and inform policy about how to prevent and address it.
Mohamed Morsi's victory is a huge step in Egypt's political development, but his authorities were recently curtailed by the military and it is unclear how much power he will actually wield, writes Jeffrey Martini.
Former RAND researcher Elizabeth McGlynn has been honored with AcademyHealth's 2012 Distinguished Investigator Award. Her extensive research on health care quality has had an enormous impact on how experts evaluate health care reform.
Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget for the next fiscal year slices funds from established, successful programs that for decades have helped California's youngest and most at-risk children gain a foothold in their own educations.
James Drake, a former RAND aeronautical engineer who is also considered the father of windsurfing died on June 19 in his hometown of Pfafftown, North Carolina. He was 83.
The Muslim Brotherhood now faces a choice. It can seat Mursi and continue to legitimate a post-Mubarak transition that seems designed to advance the narrow interests of Egypt's officer corps. Or it can return to the streets with the aim of unseating the military council, writes Jeff Martini.
As Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Day approaches on June 27th, policymakers continue to look for ways to best help our nation's servicemembers and veterans with PTSD and other combat related mental health problems.
Absent further developments or revelations, history will judge Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state as solid if unspectacular, writes James Dobbins.
The most important yet overlooked aspect of the current situation may be the cynicism and casual indifference that Putin has displayed toward the U.S.-Russian relationship in the face of his much bigger problems at home, writes Andrew S. Weiss.
When the U.S. Department of Defense purchases oil, it has almost no effect on world oil prices, according to new RAND reports. That means reducing fuel consumption is the only effective way for the Pentagon to cut its petroleum expenses.
Innovative approaches are needed to break the current stalemate of information sharing and to build a solid and reliable evidence base on the state of cyber-security, writes Neil Robinson.
Before we allow others to implement policies attempting to optimize the use of physician time or reduce the amount of equivocal or inappropriate care, we need to understand what physicians think about these issues and what they are prepared to do about them, writes Robert H. Brook.
Would-be jihadist warriors are angry, eager for adventure, out to assuage personal humiliation and demonstrate their manhood. Many appear to be motivated by personal crises—terrorism does not attract the well adjusted, writes Brian Michael Jenkins.
The military is experiencing a higher number of suicides than it has ever experienced at this time before. RAND research has a number of recommendations to prevent suicide among military personnel based.
Although health care organizations have favorable characteristics that can maximize IT's benefits, the reengineering of health care delivery is only beginning, write Spencer Jones, Paul Heaton, Robert Rudin, and Eric Schneider.
War games are especially important as countries prepare to counter adversaries who use asymmetric strategies or weapons, forcing military planners to deal with unfamiliar threats, writes Bruce Bennett.
Regulations requiring the restaurant industry to serve standardized portion sizes should be mandated and enforced by the same authorities responsible for checking hygienic conditions in food outlets, writes Deborah Cohen.
Restricting cyberweapon development could be harmful inasmuch as its core activity is the discovery of vulnerabilities in software--the very activity also required to bulletproof software against attacks from criminal hackers, writes Martin Libicki.
Fighting for MacArthur: The Navy and Marine Corps' Desperate Defense of the Philippines, a World War II history written by John Gordon, has won 2011 the Arthur Goodzeit Book Award.
Policy Researcher David Groves describes RAND's role in helping to develop a plan to guide Louisiana's coastal investments, help its coastal citizens plan for the future, and create a sustainable coast.
Proactive protection and repatriation of artworks and artifacts can demonstrate our respect for another nation's heritage when the chaos of conflict obscures the value of cultural identity, writes Erik Nemeth.
There is no need for privacy concerns to halt all discussion of new technologies to help address America's mounting transportation funding crisis, writes Liisa Ecola.
The inequality debate should focus more on the sources and reasons for inequality, and less on how much inequality there is, or how much it has changed, writes Charles Wolf, Jr.
If consumer-directed health plans grow to account for half of all employer-sponsored insurance in the United States, health costs could drop by $57 billion annually—about 4 percent of all health care spending among the nonelderly.